Diagnosing The Filibuster Issue

[Tigermike 3,042]

April 28, 2005

Diagnosing The Filibuster Issue

By Senator Orrin Hatch

(Note: Senator Hatch delivered the following remarks yesterday on the floor of the United States Senate)

Mr. President, in politics as in medicine, an effective prescription begins with an accurate diagnosis. I would like to take a step back and offer a diagnosis of our current struggle over how to conduct the judicial confirmation process. I hope this will bring a few pieces together, connect some dots, and provide a little perspective.

Mr. President, the first principle is that every judicial nomination reaching the Senate floor deserves an up or down vote. This principle has constitutional roots, historical precedent, and citizen support.

I begin with the Constitution because that is where we should always begin.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Along with the Declaration of Independence, it is one of the foundational organic laws of the United States.

It is the charter that each of us, as Senators, swears an oath before God to preserve, protect, and defend.

That Constitution separates the three branches of government, assigning legislation to us in the legislative branch and assigning appointments to the President in the executive branch.

We have heard that the Constitutional Convention considered other arrangements for appointing judges. That may be, but the Constitutional Convention rejected those arrangements. Rejected ideas do not govern us, the Constitution does. And the Constitution makes the President, in Alexander Hamilton’s words, the principal agent in appointments, while the Senate is a check on that power.

Giving judicial nominations reaching the floor an up or down vote, that is, exercising our role of advice and consent through voting on nominations, helps us resist the temptation of turning our check on the President’s power into a force that can destroy the President’s power and upset the Constitution’s balance.

Historically, we have followed this standard. When Republicans ran the Senate under President Clinton, we gave each of his judicial nominations reaching the floor a final confirmation decision. We took cloture votes, that is, votes to end debate, on just four of the hundreds of nominees reaching us here. All four were confirmed.

In fact, even on the most controversial appeals court nominations by President Clinton, the Republican leadership used cloture votes to prevent filibusters and ensure up or down votes, exactly the opposite of how cloture votes are used today.

Mr. President, this principle that every judicial nomination reaching the Senate floor deserves an up or down vote not only has constitutional roots and historical precedent, it also has citizen support. I saw in the Washington Post yesterday a poll framed in partisan terms, asking whether Senate rules should be changed “to make it easier for the Republicans to confirm Bush’s judicial nominees.”

With all due respect, this question could easily have been written in the Democrats’ new public relations war room. I am actually surprised that such a biased question did not get more than 66 percent support.

A more balanced, neutral, fair poll was released yesterday, asking whether Senate procedures should make sure that the full Senate votes, up or down, on every judicial nomination of any President. The results, not surprisingly, were exactly the opposite of the biased poll, with 64 percent of Americans, including 59 percent of moderates and almost half of liberals, embracing this common sense, fair, and traditional standard.

Mr. President, the second aspect of this diagnosis is that the judicial nominees being denied this traditional up or down vote are highly qualified men and women with majority bipartisan support.

Last week, I addressed how opponents of President Bush’s nominees play games with words like "extremist".

Just as they want to talk about a judicial appointment process the Constitution did not establish, these critics want to talk about everything but what these nominees would do on the bench. We know from abundant testimony by those who know these nominees best that, no matter how provocative their speeches off the bench or strongly held their beliefs in their hearts and minds, these nominees are or would be fair, impartial, and even-handed on the bench.

That is the real standard.

Mr. President, it is hard to believe that we are actually arguing over whether we should vote on judicial nominations and whether highly qualified nominees with majority support should be confirmed. And yet, the third part of this diagnosis is that Senate Democrats are trying to change our tradition of giving judicial nominations reaching the Senate floor an up or down vote.

Senators, of course, are free to vote against them for any reason and we must, of course, have a full and vigorous debate about these nominees and their qualifications.

The critics, however, do not want to have that debate.

Democrats in this body, and the left-wing interest groups that to a certain extent seem to control them, want only to seize what they cannot win through the fair, traditional system. Beginning in the 108th Congress, for the first time in American history, they are now using the filibuster not to debate, but to defeat, majority supported judicial nominations.

They are trying to rig the confirmation process, to pry us away from our tradition that respected the separation of powers, and force us into a brave new world which turns the judicial appointment process inside out. They want to turn our check on the President’s appointment power into a force that highjacks that power altogether. That would be serious, and constitutionally suspect, if a Senate majority did it. It is even more serious when, as we see today, a minority of Senators tries to capture the process.

For two years now, we have heard claims that these filibusters are nothing new, that they have been part and parcel of how the Senate has long done its confirmation business. While some questions in this debate may be subjective and complex, this is not one of them. The current filibusters target majority supported judicial nominations and defeat them by preventing confirmation votes. Either that happened before the 108th Congress or it didn’t.

Mr. President, let us look at what our Democratic colleagues have claimed.

On March 11, 2003, Senator Leahy displayed here on the Senate floor a chart titled Republican Filibusters of Nominees. He said his list proved that Republicans have “succeeded in blocking many nominees by cloture votes.” Anyone can look it up for his or herself, the whole chart is right there on page S3442 of the Congressional Record.

It turns out that only six of the 19 names on the chart were judicial nominations, that the Senate actually confirmed five of them, and the other one did not have majority support.

Far from justifying today’s filibusters, Senator Leahy’s chart proved no precedent exists at all.

On November 12, 2003, Senator Leahy tried again, this time with a list of what he claimed were Clinton appeals court nominees supposedly blocked by Republicans.

Once again, the list included nominations the Senate confirmed.

How can a confirmed nomination be called a blocked nomination?

It cannot.

Not a single nomination on Senator Leahy’s list is similar to the nominations being filibustered today.

That same day, November 12, 2003, Senator Durbin named five judicial nominations which he said had been filibustered.

Once again, not one of them is a precedent for the filibusters happening today. You would think no one with a straight face would claim that ending debate and confirming nominations is somehow precedent for not ending debate and refusing to confirm nominations.

On April 15, 2005, the distinguished Assistant Minority Leader, Senator Durbin, expanded his previous list, now offering us 12 examples of what he said were judicial nominations requiring at least 60 votes for cloture to end a filibuster.

I addressed this in more detail last week. Not one of Senator Durbin’s supposed precedents is any precedent at all.

The first nomination on his list occurred in 1881, 36 years before we even had a cloture rule. In fact, if we truly did what he apparently wants us to do, and treated his listed examples as a confirmation guide, we would vigorously debate judicial nominations, invoke cloture if we needed to, and then vote on their confirmation.

This game continued as recently as two days ago.

On Monday, April 25, on CNN’s Crossfire program, the leader of a prominent left-wing group claimed that more than 30 nominations had been filibustered. I have their list in my hand right here, it is titled Filibusters of Nominations. It lists 13 judicial nominations, and not one of them is at all like the filibusters being conducted today.

We did not even take a cloture vote on two of them. We invoked cloture on eight of them. We confirmed 12 of them.

And one did not have majority support.

Accepting such fraudulent arguments requires believing that ending debate on judicial nominations is the same thing as not ending debate, that confirming judicial nominations is the same thing as not confirming them, and that judicial nominations without majority support are the same as those with majority support.

As you can see, Mr. President, the liberal propaganda machine has been working overtime.

In addition to the bizarre claims I just described, they work to turn what once was considered common sense and accepted fairness into something that sounds sinister and unseemly.

They manufacture nasty phrases like court-packing and ominous warnings about one-party rule. Now, we are told, preventing up or down votes on even majority supported judicial nominations is the only way to prevent our entire constitutional order from imploding.

The sky is falling, and we are all about to slide into the abyss.

The purveyors of this fantasy would have us look to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who, they tell us, wanted to pack the Supreme Court. The Senate rejected his legislative proposal to expand the Court so he could appoint more Justices. By taking this stand, the storytellers say, the Senate kept one-party rule from packing the Court.

As Paul Harvey might say, here is the rest of the story.

The Senate, even though dominated by President Roosevelt’s own party, did not support this legislative plan. And it turns out President Roosevelt did not need any legislative innovations to pack the Supreme Court. He packed it all right, doing it the old-fashioned way, by appointing eight out of nine Justices in just six years. Mind you, during the 75th to the 77th Congress, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by an average of 70 to 20.

Now that is one-party rule.

In those years, from 1937 to 1943, our cloture rule applied only to bills. This meant that ending debate on other things, such as nominations, required unanimous consent. A single Senator in that tiny beleaguered minority could conduct a filibuster of President Roosevelt’s nominations and thwart the real court-packing that was in full swing.

If the filibuster were the only thing preventing one-party rule from packing the courts, and the filibuster were so easily used, surely there were filibusters of President Roosevelt’s Supreme Court nominations. If the warnings, frantic pleas, and hysterical fundraising appeals we hear today make any sense at all, the filibuster would certainly have been used in FDR’s time.

I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but there were no filibusters, not even by a single Senator, not against a single nominee. In fact, FDR’s eight Supreme Court nominees were confirmed in an average of just 13 days, and six of the eight without even a roll call vote.

Even when we look at the very examples and stories the other side uses, we see no support for using the filibuster against majority supported judicial nominations.

Last week, here on the Senate floor, Senator Durbin repeated a selective version of this FDR story and asked what would happen today in a Senate dominated by the President’s party. He asked: “Will they rise in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt’s Senate?”

Mr. President, I hope we do.

I hope the Senate does exactly what Franklin Roosevelt’s Senate did, by debating and voting on the President’s judicial nominations. Franklin Roosevelt’s Senate did not use the filibuster, even when the minority was much smaller and the filibuster much easier to use, and this Senate should not either.

Finally, Mr. President, the fourth piece to this diagnosis of our current situation is that Senate Democrats have threatened to shut down the Senate if the majority moves us back to the tradition of debating and voting on judicial nominations. To avoid doing what most Americans believe Senators come to Washington to do, debate and vote, we are now threatened with a party policy of open obstruction.

I said a few minutes ago that the Constitution’s separation of powers assigns legislative business to Congress and executive business, including appointments, to the President.

Senators on the other side of the aisle are saying that if they cannot highjack what is not theirs, they will destroy what is theirs. If they cannot abandon Senate tradition and use the filibuster to defeat majority supported judicial nominations, they will undercut and disable the legislative process.

And they call us radical.

Mr. President, the Constitution gives the power of nomination and appointment to the President. The Senate provides a check on that power. I believe we must preserve that system of separated powers and checks and balances and resist those who would radically alter that system, turning the Senate’s check on the President’s power into a force that can overwhelm the President’s power.

Mr. President, every judicial nomination reaching the Senate floor deserves an up or down vote. That principle has constitutional roots, historical precedent, and citizen support.

President Bush has sent highly qualified nominees who we know have bipartisan majority support. They deserve to be treated decently and, after a full and vigorous debate, given an up or down vote.

Senate Democrats are trying to change our tradition. For the first time in more than two centuries, they want to use filibusters to block confirmation votes on judicial nominations here on the Senate floor. This radical innovation is not needed to prevent one-party rule from packing the courts; Republicans resisted using the filibuster under Roosevelt, and Democrats should resist using it today.

And finally, all Americans should be most concerned with the threats of Senate Democrats. Because they are unable to seize control of a judicial appointment process that does not belong to the Senate, Democrats say they will shut down the legislative process that does belong to the Senate.

This cannot stand.

With all due respect, they need to get both their principles and their priorities in order.

Our former Majority Leader Bob Dole has a thoughtful column in today’s New York Times also addressing Senate tradition and the prospect of returning to that tradition. No one loves this institution more than Senator Dole, and I ask unanimous consent that his column be placed in the Record.

As our current Majority Leader Bill Frist put it a few days ago, I never thought it was a radical thing to ask Senators to vote. That is what we have traditionally done on judicial nominations that reach the floor, and that traditional standard should apply across the board, no matter which party controls the White House and no matter which party controls the Senate.

That is the diagnosis, Mr. President, and I hope we see an effective cure soon so we can get back to doing the people’s business.

I yield the floor.

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Washington Post

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NY TIMES?

[Tiger Al 0]

I like Orrin Hatch. He's a little too conservative for me, but I like him nonetheless. I noticed how...crafty...he was in his speech. It wasn't technically a lie, but it was a bit dishonest. When talking about Clinton's nominee's ALWAYS being given an up or down vote it was always preceded by the words, "that were presented to the floor of the Senate." Dick Durbin brings this point up in his counter, but I doubt you will get that far. In fact, you probably aren't even reading these words right here! But, if you are, Hatch covered himself by always saying "presented to the floor" because he knows that during Clinton's terms he held up nominees from even getting a hearing in the subcommittee. He's complaining about the actions of 45+ Senators "usurping" the president's wishes while he 1 Senator, unilatterally usurped another President's wishes.

Anyway, Senator Richard Durbin's counterpoint:

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I thank the chairman of the committee. Let me say I share his sense of urgency about the underlying bill. This is a bipartisan bill, a bill Democrats and Republicans want to see passed, a bill to

finance the building of roads and bridges and airports, to finance mass

transit in what is critical infrastructure for America’s economy. I do not

have an amendment to the bill, but if I did, I would offer it because I think

those who have them should bring them to the floor so we can move and

get it done before we take a recess next week. I urge my colleagues on the

Democratic side to follow the admonition of the chairman.

What brings me to the floor was a statement made earlier by the Senator from Utah which made reference to me. Senator ORRIN HATCH and I are friends.

We disagree on a lot of things. We vote differently on a lot of issues

and we debate furiously, but we get along fine. I think that is what life

should be like and what the legislative process should be like. He made a reference

earlier to this whole question of the nuclear option, to which I would

like to return for a few moments. First, what is the nuclear option?

People who don’t follow the Senate on a regular basis have to wonder are they

using nuclear weapons on the floor of the Senate? What could it be? ‘‘Nuclear

Option’’ was a phrase created by Republican Senator TRENT LOTT to describe

a procedure that might be used to change the rules of the Senate. The

reason Senator LOTT called it the nuclear option was because it is devastating

in its impact to the tradition and rules of the Senate. I will put it into context. The Senate was created to give the minority in the

Senate, as well as in the United States, a voice. There are two Senators from

every State, large and small. Two Senators from the smallest State have the

same vote on the floor of the Senate as Senators from larger States, such as

California, New York, Illinois, and Texas. That is the nature of the Senate.

The rules of the Senate back that up. The rules of the Senate from the

beginning said if any Senator stood up and objected, started a filibuster, the

Senate would come to a stop. You think to yourself, how can you run a

Senate if any Senator can stop the train? Well, it forces you, if you are

going to move something forward in the Senate, to reach across the aisle to

your colleagues, to compromise, to find bipartisanship, so that things move

through in a regular way and in a bipartisan way. That is the nature of the

filibuster. Over the years, it has changed. You saw the movie ‘‘Mr. Smith Goes to

Washington,’’ when Jimmy Stewart stood at his desk, with his idealism and

his youth, arguing for his cause until he collapsed on the floor. He was exercising

a filibuster because he believed in it so intensely. We have said over

the years that you can do that to any nominee, bill, or law on the floor of the

Senate; but if a large number of Senators, an extraordinary number of Senators,

say it is time for the filibuster to end, it would end. The vote today is

60 votes. So if I am perplexed by an amendment offered by one of my colleagues,

and I stand up to debate it and decide I am going to hold the floor of

the Senate as long as my voice and body can hold out, I can do that, until

such point as 60 colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, come together and

say: Enough, we want to move to a vote. That is what it is all about.

So what has happened is the Republicans now control the House, Senate,

and the White House. What they have said is they want to change the rules.

They want to change the rules in the middle of the game because they don’t

like the fact that Democratic Senators have used the filibuster to stop 10 judicial

nominees President Bush has sent to Congress, sent to the Senate.

Now, for the record, the President sent 215 nominees; 205 were approved

and only 10 were not. Over 95 percent of the President’s judicial nominees have

gone through. We have the lowest vacancy rate on the Federal bench in

modern memory. So we don’t have outrageous vacancies that need to be filled

quickly. We decided—those of us who voted for the filibusters—that these 10

nominees went way too far; their political views were inconsistent with the

mainstream of America. They were not consistent with the feelings and values

of families across the country on issues as diverse as the role of the Federal

Government in protecting health and safety, which is an issue nominee Janice

Rogers Brown takes a position on that is hard to believe. She has taken

a position on a case—a famous case called the Lockner case—which would

basically take away the power of the Federal Government to regulate areas

of health and safety when it comes to consumers and the environment. It is a

radical position. And then another nominee, William Myers—my concern about him and the concern of many Senators is the fact that he has taken a radical position

when it comes to our Nation’s treasury and heritage, our natural and public

lands. He has taken a position where he backs certain lobby groups, but there

is one that we think is inconsistent with mainstream thinking in America.

So there is an objection. Other nominees have taken what we

consider to be far-out positions that don’t reflect the mainstream of America

and we have objected, which is our right. Now the President says: Enough,

I am tired of losing any nominee to the Senate. Don’t we have 55 Republicans?

Should we not get what we want? He is not the first President who has

felt that way. Thomas Jefferson felt that way. Thomas Jefferson, in the beginning

of his second term, came to the Senate and said: I am sick and tired of

the judges who have been appointed to the Supreme Court. I want to start impeaching them. You know what Jefferson’s party said? No, Mr. President, you are wrong. The Constitution is more important than your Presidential power. They

said no to Thomas Jefferson. Franklin Roosevelt did the same

thing at the beginning of his second term. He was unhappy that his New

Deal legislation was being rejected. He came to the Senate and said: Let’s change this and make sure we can put more Justices on the Supreme Court

and get the votes we want. His Democratic Party in the Senate

said: No, Mr. President, we love you and we are glad you were elected, and

we support your New Deal, but you have gone too far. Presidential power is

not more important than the Constitution. They said no to him.

So now comes President Bush and Vice President CHENEY, and they have

said: We don’t like the fact that we only have 95 percent of our nominees

approved; we want them all. We want to change the rules of the Senate—in

fact, we will break those rules to change them so that President Bush

can get every single nominee. Unfortunately, very few on that side of the

aisle from the President’s party are willing to stand up and say to this

President, as Senators have said to President Jefferson and President Roosevelt:

You are going too far. What you are doing here, sadly, is going to abuse

the Constitution to build the power of the White House.

The Senator from Utah, Mr. HATCH, came in earlier and made a statement.

He said every nominee should have an up-or-down vote. On its face, that

sounds reasonable. We understand the rules of the Senate allow the filibuster

and an extraordinary majority for nominees. What Senator HATCH failed

to mention was that when he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee

during the Clinton administration—those 8 years—over 60 Presidential

nominees for the bench who were sent up by President Clinton to his committee

were buried in committee without so much as a hearing. They didn’t

even have a chance to stand up and defend themselves, explain their point of

view. Senator HATCH said, no. Over 60 Presidential nominees for President

Clinton were stopped by Senator HATCH on the Judiciary Committee. I know; I

served on the committee. I watched it happen. I heard Senator HATCH say

every nominee should have an up-ordown vote. He is suffering from political

amnesia. He has forgotten when he was in charge, 60 nominees never even

had a hearing, let alone an up-or-down vote.

So we come to this point, a point where I think the issues are very clear.

The Republicans are prepared, with the help of Vice President CHENEY—who

announced over the weekend he supports them—to break the rules of the

Senate, which are in a book that is seldom drawn out of our desks. The rules

of the Senate say it takes 67 votes to change the rules of the Senate. That is

a big number, 67 out of 100. The Republicans know they don’t have 67 votes to

change the filibuster rule, so they have decided to do it differently. They are

going to wait until Vice President CHENEY is in the chair, and they are going

to make a point of order that we should just have a simple majority

vote on judicial nominees. And Vice President CHENEY is going to rule—he

already said he would—and that is that. That is the end of the story.

So they are breaking the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate,

to eliminate a tradition and rule that has been around for 200 years.

They are changing the rules in the middle of the game. The net result of

that is this: The Senate will lose power when it comes to checks and balances.

The President will have more power. It will mean that the President—this

President, unlike President Jefferson and President Roosevelt—will trump

the Constitution and will basically say: I am going to take more power away

from the Senate. And his party will go along with that, even though President

Jefferson and President Roosevelt had members of their own party stand up

and say: Mr. President, you have gone too far.

The net result—the one that troubles me the most—is that we are talking

about lifetime appointments to the Federal bench. If you take people who

are so far out of the mainstream and stick them on a Federal bench for life,

let me tell you, we don’t have a clue what that is going to mean. But it is

certainly worrisome that they could rule and change laws that we value as

Americans—laws that, frankly, cross both political borders and Democrats

and Republicans have supported. When you put somebody on the bench with

that much power for a lifetime, then you have to worry about them.

So we have tried to come to some conclusion. Senator REID of Nevada,

our Democratic leader, came to the floor to describe in general terms what

he has been doing. For weeks, he has been negotiating with Senator FRIST

and speaking to other Republican Senators about avoiding this constitutional

confrontation, avoiding a constitutional crisis, avoiding this effort

to change the rules in the middle of the game. He has made an offer—a goodfaith

offer—to bring some of these judges forward, to talk about rule

changes that are in the best interests of this institution; and, frankly, Senator

FRIST said yesterday: No, we are not talking about it anymore. It is

over. That is unfortunate.

It is important that we continue a dialog. The good thing about the filibuster

is that it brings us together in order to move a nominee or a bill. Republicans

have to reach across the aisle to Democrats and Democrats have to

reach across to Republicans. That is the way it should be in this Chamber.

It should not be a line down the middle and a wall that cannot be breached.

That is exactly what we face if the Republicans go forward with the nuclear

option.

When I return to Illinois, they say: Senator, can we come together to pass

this highway bill Senator INHOFE is bringing to the floor? We will and it

will be a good, bipartisan bill. We have been waiting, but let’s pass this bill on

a bipartisan basis. They say: Senator, can’t Democrats and Republicans work

together to do something about health insurance? You don’t even talk about

it on the Senate floor. I think we can. I know that business interests, as well

as labor interests, want us to bring up this issue and resolve it. We should do

it on a bipartisan basis. They say: Senator, can’t you sit down and find a Republican who wants to put more money into our schools for No Child Left Behind,

so that we can have better schools, better teachers, better students?

Of course, we should move toward bipartisanship. But the nuclear option,

sadly, is going to divide us, split us. Make no mistake, if the nuclear option

goes forward, this will be a different Senate and not very good in the process,

I am afraid. A lot will happen that will be bad for us. Some have said on

the floor, well, certainly at that point the Democrats are going to shut down

the Senate and the Government. Trust me, that is not going to happen. We

saw that tactic once. Remember the name Newt Gingrich and the Contract

with America? He was so emboldened by Rush Limbaugh, he said if we shut

down the Federal Government, nobody will notice. We noticed in a hurry and

it hurt the Republican Party when they did it. We are not going to make

that mistake. We believe that important functions of this Government

must move forward. The defense of America, the support of our troops, the

passage of critical appropriations bills, the passage of a highway bill—those

issues are moving forward. But the ordinary day-to-day business of the Senate,

otherwise, is going to be changed a lot.

If the Republicans are prepared to break the rules to change the rules,

sadly the Senate Democrats will have to say we must play by the rest of the

rules. That means more time on the floor, more debate, Senators spending

more time at their desks, more time in session, more time in Washington. You

hear the complaint that 5,000-page bills come before us that nobody reads. We

will read them. Important amendments will be read. Debate will take place,

and instead of the Chamber almost always being empty, it may be almost always

full. Things will change. I think there is a better way. Senator REID has suggested a better way—that cooler heads prevail, that those truly

interested in not only the institution of the Senate but the value of the Constitution

come forward. We can protect the filibuster. We can make certain

that we do it in a sensible way. But we can only do it if we are in a dialog.

Senator FRIST’s comments yesterday are worrisome.

[AUloggerhead 2,244]

I like Orrin Hatch. He's a little too conservative for me, but I like him nonetheless. I noticed how...crafty...he was in his speech. It wasn't technically a lie, but it was a bit dishonest. When talking about Clinton's nominee's ALWAYS being given an up or down vote it was always preceded by the words, "that were presented to the floor of the Senate." Dick Durbin brings this point up in his counter, but I doubt you will get that far. In fact, you probably aren't even reading these words right here! But, if you are, Hatch covered himself by always saying "presented to the floor" because he knows that during Clinton's terms he held up nominees from even getting a hearing in the subcommittee. He's complaining about the actions of 45+ Senators "usurping" the president's wishes while he 1 Senator, unilatterally usurped another President's wishes.

The Constitution says each house of Congress can make their own rules. What Orrin Hatch said is not a lie, it's not dishonest, and it doesn't even depend on what the meaning of 'is' is ( ). The Senate has made rules to let the committees do most of the heavy lifting. If something doesn't make it out of committee, then it dies right there and never reaches the floor. Basically, it's nothing more than a method for the majority to control Senate business. Each party has done this while in the majority, btw. It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, the Senate could choose to change the rules to some other way. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen, though. And that brings us back to the use of the filibuster. The Senate has the Constitutional authority to make it's own rules, and that includes the wherefores & whyfores of rules concerning ... filibusters.

[Tiger Al 0]

The Constitution says each house of Congress can make their own rules. What Orrin Hatch said is not a lie, it's not dishonest, and it doesn't even depend on what the meaning of 'is' is.

He was making the case that the Democrats are being obstructionists and when given the prior chance to do the same, republicans had not. No, what he said was not a lie, as I said before. It was, however, dishonest when taken within the context of the point he was asserting.